Oh, the Places You'll Go

How do you get somewhere when you don't even know where you want to go? As I'm applying to internships and figuring out what kind of law to practice, I feel like for the first time in my life I don't have a final destination. But I have to remind myself that it's really not, and even if it was, it's really not so bad.

Looking at college in retrospect, it always seems like I had everything planned out because it worked out so well. Everything I wanted to do, I checked one by one off of my list. But besides knowing that I wanted to go to law school, I didn't have this master plan entering UCLA. Heck, I came in as an English major who had never done anything political in her life. I never imagined that I would join Bruin Democrats, let alone be President. Never thought of interning on the Hill, being IVP of USAC, or befriending a former Presidential candidate. It all just happened from seizing random opportunities. That was exploring, and that was fun.

I guess because I feel like the stakes are higher nowadays that I'm putting more pressure on myself to figure out "the plan." I'm not just killing time before law school, I should be preparing for a job. But after going on a panel today by all my professors (who have all done really amazing things), I'm telling myself not to worry. They emphasized just taking a lot of different classes and getting a lot of different internships to explore opportunities (which I'm becoming progressively more excited about). Because even the people who really think they know what they want to do might end up doing something completely different and loving it.

My favorite example was my Constitutional Law professor who was a partner at a huge law firm, worked for the Department of Health and Human Services and Education, was White House counsel, was Associate Attorney General, and was counsel for the 9-11 Commission. And he had no idea what he wanted to do when he graduated law school. Can I just say that I want to be him when I grow up?